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Moral critics-- of a lot of things, but in this case GTA 4-- make arguments along the lines of how such-and-such encourages such-and-such behavior. This is a world where humans are only meaningfully defined by their incapacity to make a choice. They make arguments along the lines that if we allow gay civil unions or marriage even, then we've practically made it a requirement that people have them. Oh, no, the Jones are a homosexual couple-- how do we compete with that?
There is something so bizarre about this kind of thinking, and what offends it the most is the thought that people have choices they can make and that they should be allowed to freely choose. Choice includes stupid and awful shit. If it didn't, John Savage at the end of Brave New World wouldn't have had the kind of conversation he had with Mustapha Mond. Savage choses "the right to grow old and ugly and impotent; the right to have syphilis and cancer; the right to have too little to eat; the right to be lousy; the right to live in constant apprehension of what may happen to-morrow; the right to catch typhoid; the right to be tortured by unspeakable pains of every kind." Moral critics of the sort who come around and bash GTA, at least so ineloquently as most do, are like or fancy themselves to be like the rulers of Brave New World's universe. People are only allowed to enjoy when it is not their enjoyment, but of others.
So, when moral critics come out against GTA, saying it encourages, which we know practically means holds a gun up to your head and forces you to commit, violence, they give new meaning one of the most peculiar phrases of the last 8 years: "They hate us for our freedom."
